


Yours. Mine. Ours

by chewingonpearls (Reallife)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Carrying Guilt, F/M, Found Family, Gift Exchange, Happy Ending, M/M, OT3, Pining, Self induced confidence issues, Self induced isolation, Shapeshifters - Freeform, moving forward, very vague magic mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 07:31:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13002882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reallife/pseuds/chewingonpearls
Summary: Wolves are pack animals. They weren't made for isolation, for loneliness and cold nights without someone else at your back.But Eliot could handle it.He could.





	Yours. Mine. Ours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ravelqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravelqueen/gifts).



> For an awesome gift exchange! I haven't done one of these in at least a year, I hope you like it! It probably wasn't what you had in mind, so. Uh. I apologize in advance, but I hope it's in the same vein at least.
> 
> Thanks to Fleur for organizing this and helping with editing! Their Ao3, is [fleurlb](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fleurlb/pseuds/fleurlb) check them out! 
> 
> So. I haven’t read a whole lot of ABO fic, and I’ve never written it. But I have read a few of books about werewolves and shape shifters (one of my favorite Urban Fantasy series has a major focus on them) so I sort of wrote this more inspired by that than anything else. 
> 
> Anyway. Here's Wonderwall.

\--------

They were back. Already in the hardware store like she knew that’s where he was going to be going this afternoon. It didn’t take much to narrow it down though, there were all of three stores in town, and town might have been a stretch as it was. Cold was beginning to seep into the air, and he was stocking up on supplies in case he lost power or couldn’t get into town for a long stretch.

So the hardware store was crowded, everyone who lived in town or on the very outskirts like he did was coming in for similar preparation. It shouldn’t be so easy for the blonde woman to work her way through the store in a way that kept her from bumping into shoppers and fix him with an unabashed stare all the while. 

Her partner, who had to be her mate with their scents so intertwined like they were, was probably nearby. Eliot saw them separately sometimes around town, but one was never in the area without the other, though she was more subtle than he was, smoother and more graceful in both forms.

Having wolves in his territory wasn’t bad, though nor was it something he particularly wanted. It wasn’t common, but it happened still. Other packs passed through, or they hunted here sporadically, because the mountains were filled with deer and smaller game as long as you minded the bears. But they usually went back to their proper cities in short order. 

These two kept coming around, with smaller intervals between visits, no pack, just them.

(Still more than he had though.)

More than he had in a long time. 

The winters were hardest. Wolves weren’t meant to be alone, especially not in the cold. The old adage of the lone wolf dying but the pack surviving when the winter comes in isn’t as applicable to wolves with a second form, like him (and the strangers), but it wasn’t far. Beyond the warmth of another body next to him, beyond the security of knowing he had someone else watching his back, there was the loneliness. 

His empty cabin up on the mountainside got awfully quiet, deafening even when it was covered with a thick blanket of snow. 

That’s okay though. He deserved this. Deserved the cold and the quiet for what he had done, for the blood he could sometimes still see ingrained into his calluses when he woke screaming.

The strangers had been passing through town a little under a year ago, or he thought they had been passing through. Folks liked to avoid wolves who put themselves in forced isolation, they had a habit of not staying stable for long, so he gave them a wide berth out of habit. Except he caught their eyes, whether he wanted their attention or not.

 _Maybe_ , he thought, just maybe, he was imagining it. 

At the end of their first week there, though, he stumbled onto them on what passed as the cereal aisle of the grocery store. A clever little side step and they were blocking his favorite granola cereal, a thing they shouldn’t even know about. They didn’t look like they were going to attack, the wisp of a blonde watching him with a guarded but curious expression, just slightly ahead of the man, as if she was protecting him. 

Eliot could leave. Could make do with what he had, could walk around the store and come back, or hell, he could just ask them politely to step aside. 

However, he did none of those things. For all that he spent part of his time on two legs, the wolf part of him was stronger and didn’t take this threat on his own territory well. Logically, he knew he wasn’t being threatened _physically_ , but it felt like a taunt.

So he stepped closer to them, shoulders raised and spine straightening to his full (still not impressive, honestly) height with narrowed eyes and a growl on his lips. The intimidation factor was probably a little low with his hair mostly in a high ponytail and a reusable grocery bag in hand, but he hadn’t expected the grins on their faces. More startling was the scents that washed over him, the strength of an _alpha_ and even arousal, the former had him leaning forward involuntarily while the latter had his eyes widening in confusion.

“Hey man, come here often?” The guy gave him a cheeky grin and raised his arm as if he was going to try and shake Eliot’s hand of all things, but he nearly knocked over a display of raisins in the process and got distracted from Eliot as he tried to stop it from hitting the floor.

Well. That was anticlimactic. 

The woman was still watching him intently though, standing on the balls of her feet, body loose like she was prepared to run at a moment’s notice. But she wouldn’t run without her partner. They didn’t wear wedding rings, but he had seen them around town, saw the way they moved together. The way they were always aware of each other and the other’s space, the way they communicated with facial expressions and slight body movements just as much as words. When he caught scent of them around town or even on the road towards his cabin, it was near impossible to distinguish one from the other, and he could only do it now because they were so close.

There was an ache in his chest that felt a little too akin to longing, and something in his throat burned like envy at the bond they shared.

She tilted her head at him, “You’re not what we expected.”

Alarm replaced the amusement of a few moments prior, old fears of being hunted for revenge or someone’s skewed version of justice surfaced. People he didn’t want - _can’t bear-_ to see again showing up with the stink of anger and hatred rolling off of them.

So he kept his heart rate down, wary of them hearing it. The guy, now grinning sheepishly in a way far too endearing for a stranger in his territory, stood back up from messing with the display and placed his hand on the woman’s arm; a quick, fleeting touch meant to show that he was there if she needed him.

Ah, there is that ache again. Never far, closer and louder now as the months of voluntary solitary living wore on.

“What do you two want?” His voice was suddenly raspy, like he hadn’t spoken in days, like he was sick.

She grinned at him, “We didn’t know before, but we do now. We’d tell you, but Sophie says it’s better to let people figure things out on their own, so they don’t question their decision later.” The words were confounding and sounded like the answer to a different question in a whole ‘nother conversation they weren’t even having.

But she looked satisfied with herself and nodded at him before she stuck her hands in her pockets to stride down the aisle. Eliot had been standing so close to them that when she walked past her hair nearly brushed his face, and he scowled.

The guy had the nerve to laugh and pat his shoulder like they were old friends instead of strangers, “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

“What?” He snapped, but the guy just waved to him as he followed his just-as-confusing other half.

_What_

He still didn’t know their names. Just that the deer they sometimes dropped on his front porch weren’t poisoned, the townspeople found the guy charming somehow, let him pay for Eliot’s groceries during the times they were _coincidentally_ in the store at the same time. Nadine, his favorite cashier, would pat his hand when it clenched on the conveyor belt with frustration, and tell him that everyone needed someone to look out for them.

She was right though. The strangers had each other, the dopey smile he would give her when she clambered around what passed for a jungle gym in the town’s singular park to entertain kids, the patient way she listened when he went on about _Star Trek_ while they sat on the front porch of the general store and drank the best coffee this side of the Hudson.

The third month they dropped in for a visit, they started waving to him, and out of reflex more than anything he returned the gesture. Well, then they were expecting it, and he had no choice now.

Eliot wasn’t sure where they slept, but at least two nights during their usually one week visit he saw two wolves sleeping outside his cabin under the trees. They curled up together, wound up around each other tightly with their noses buried in the other’s fur. His wolf was bigger than hers, but, if possible, she was more graceful like this than on two legs, blue eyes watching the window he stood at with more knowing in them than he was entirely comfortable with.

He stood on his front porch when they trotted up the road, nipping at each other playfully, a few months into-whatever this was. They chased one another like damn puppies around his trees before darting off to hunt like they had no cares in the world.

Omega wolves weren’t real. The kind that were docile, that couldn’t defend themselves and needed not just a pack but an Alpha to keep them content and healthy. They were a myth, made up by those with an overactive imagination or who wanted to keep some betas in packs they didn’t want to be in.

Betas like Eliot.

He didn’t require a Pack, and definitely not an Alpha.

Except. 

He wanted to change and follow after them with such a strong need it was like a physical pain pulling him towards them. Hands too rough and calloused gripped the kitchen counter so he could breathe through it and focus on all the reasons he couldn’t. Eliot was dangerous, was broken and fucked up, not gentle enough, not empathetic enough, too unhinged before and probably more now if pushed in the slightest.

Too much baggage weighing him down, too many nightmares, not enough softness or anything else he was sure they wanted.

They kept coming around. Not asking anything except occasionally change for a twenty or what was Mrs.Catrow’s deal, anyway, the former was greeted with his own struggling attempts not to steal an opportunity to touch their hands in the process of handing them whatever they were looking for.

 _Touch starved,_ the internet called it, _desperate_ Eliot privately decided. But he didn’t growl at them again, didn’t tell them to go away or get off his property. Instead he paced around his cabin and tried not to go after them.

Now he stood in the hardware store with Winter approaching and the woman whose name he still didn’t know but whose laugh and scent he had memorized lurked a couple aisles over watching him with too much comfortable casualness to not have done it professionally. They had never elaborated on what they wanted from him, what they expected him to realize on his own apparently.

(He had known months ago, if he was being honest. But he didn’t want to embrace it. What if they realized they were wrong. What if he hurt them. What if. _what if it all happened again_ )

They didn’t spy on him all the time, they just existed in his general vicinity as if they had always been there. He stumbled on them on accident nearly every time, which was _stupid_ because he could smell them for fucksake. They never missed him though, turning to him like sunflowers to the sun; a motion too smooth for something so unnatural, because no one sane with the intelligence they had should be drawn to him like that.

The next night Eliot woke up with a hammering heart and had to clear his house with pistol in hand before the feeling of being _hunted_ began to fade from his system. So he stepped out barenaked into the night and _shifted_ , relieved to feel the peace that comes with four legs and the wolf mind. 

Wolves have simpler wants and fears than men. His wolf wants to eat, wants to sleep and wants a pack. Memories from days far behind them don’t bother the Wolf, any guilt he felt is a distant thing, more of an echo than anything else. He shook, fur ruffling with the motion, took a moment to stretch and look around the clearing. 

The strangers, who were not Pack but not threats were nearby but not close enough he could tell where they were exactly, and they were not together. Maybe he would find them, and maybe he wouldn’t. Eliot didn’t plan or stress as much as a wolf.

It could be addicting.

He took off for the lake, enough of a distance away that it would take a few minutes even at near full speed and leave him thirsty by the time he got there. Besides, there was something there that night pulling him that he couldn’t name or define, something strong that he couldn’t argue with even if he wanted to.

Eliot’s Wolf was large, too large to be a normal wolf if you knew what you were looking for, as broad here as he was on two legs with coloring similar to a German Shepherd with waves of black, earthy brown and tan throughout his thick fur. He loved the mountains, was born for a cold climate, muscled more than many he had met, built for climbing and strong enough to take the occasional fall.

Other nocturnal animals darted away from him in sudden fear of the rushing predator, and Eliot was tempted to give chase for the fun of the hunt. But the lake called, and he answered.

The trees opened up and gave way to water, and there was a man there. One of the strangers, lounging on shore as if he was on a sunny beach instead of the middle of mosquito filled woods. Surely he knew that the wolf was behind him, but he did not react, kept his eyes on the water even as Eliot shoved his nose behind the man’s ear to breath in deep-

He broke then, giving a deep laugh that pleased both forms of Eliot in a way that should have felt too easy and reaching up to half-heartedly bat him away, “Aw man, my ear’s all wet now.”  
But he grinned anyway as Eliot trotted in front of him, stealing the attention he had previously been bestowing on the water all to himself. The man grinned at him, hand raised as if to touch him before he stopped himself and let it drop, “I told Parker you would be just as gorgeous like this.”

Eliot the man would have shifted awkwardly or rolled his eyes, unused to compliments from people who didn’t want something.

This man wanted something, but not the kind of something he was used to being in demand for.

The wolf had no such doubt or self-loathing, instead he sat back on his haunches in the moonlight and nearly preened. It earned him another laugh, which sort of made it all worth it, but he did tilt his head to the side in confusion at the name, “Huh?” The man was looking at him without an ounce of fear or apprehension, only curiosity and appreciation, even though his throat was in easy grabbing range of Eliot’s jaws.

He figured it out a minute later, “Oh! Parker, she’s the woman I’m always with. I forgot we never introduced ourselves, I’m Alec Hardison,” He extended his hand and Eliot glared, he was not a common dog to _shake_ for a treat.

 _Hardison_ just gave him a shit-eating grin and withdrew his hand, “You feelin’ restless or what?” There was an unspoken question about if he was staying there and Eliot considered it, turning around to peer around the lake curiously before looking back at Hardison.

The man left it vague, left the ball in his court without pressure or expectation.

Except.

Except there was an excitement in his eyes, and happiness crinkling the corners that had been there since he first realized who was sniffing at him. A smile that he was attempting to control kept trying to take over his features in a way that Eliot knew would transform his face like it always did when he watched Parker having fun or relaxing around town.

Eliot wanted to be the source of that smile, just once. It was okay to be selfish if it didn’t hurt anyone, right?

Even the wolf was grateful to see human eyes watching him like this, as if he were safe to be around. As if he made this beautiful man feel comfortable and _happy_. 

Like Eliot was wanted.

Hardison must have figured out that Eliot was staying, because he gave that blinding smile again and the Wolf nearly whined because it was just _too much_. Luckily Hardison didn’t catch on to how much it affected him, or if he did then he was kind enough not to call him out on it and instead he lay back on the ground with his hands behind his head to stare at the stars.

“Glad you’re here, Parker’s off doing her own thing for the night. It gets lonely without her sometimes.” The words were quiet without near as much weight as they should have had for something so open. It was something that Eliot couldn’t do, couldn’t return that kind of honesty on good days, especially on a night when he had woken up feeling like the pieces of himself were scattered around his home in ragged scraps.

Parker was the same way, he saw it in her eyes when she was around town and when she watched him. There was something too close to hope and want in her eyes when she watched Eliot, but a familiar guarded wariness below that. 

The Wolf couldn’t return the sentiment. Couldn’t tell him how he was lonely too, or how glad he was that Hardison was there, fangs and golden eyes couldn’t properly convey that the only thing worse than the suffocating loneliness was thinking that he _deserved_ it.

He didn’t want to anyway.

Not really.

So instead he circled Hardison, letting his paws and tail drag along his body before falling to the ground and rolling against him and earning another laugh in the process. The Wolf wanted Hardison to smell like him. Wanted the smell to cling to him, so Parker would smell it when she got back, so when Parker snuggled close to him she would smell like Eliot to.

Like Pack.

Or whatever flimsy illusion of it Eliot could get that would keep him a little more stable for the oncoming cold.

He curled around Hardison to keep him warm and let his head rest on his chest to hear his heartbeat. This wasn’t something that Eliot the man could have, but the Wolf had less fear, less doubt in himself and his instincts.

So the Wolf would let them give, and he would take without reserve. Just this once.

He remembered stumbling home in the dawn, leaving Hardison alone on the shore still sleeping when he scented Parker not far off. He had the feeling that Parker wouldn’t let him dance around whatever this was, that she would confront him directly, and that was a fear that seeped from the man to the Wolf.

It was a little hazy. He hadn’t been his best lately, and shitty sleep leading up to hours guarding over someone who wasn’t even his wasn’t doing much for his head. So he could have been forgiven for not grabbing his gun fast enough when his front door was unlocked even though the only key was in a bowl on the kitchen counter.

Hardison the Wolf walked in, head hung low and tail dragging in a clear show of sadness, and hardly glanced up at him. He was following Parker, who seemed to stride into his home as if it were hers with anger in her step and sharp eyes that should have brought on fear in his bones instead of excitement.

“You left. We thought you figured it out and you _left_.” Betrayal there, but worse, disappointment. 

Eliot’s mouth opened, to say what, he wasn’t sure, but she cut him off, “Look at him. We thought,” The click her teeth made when she snapped her mouth shut was audible, and he flinched at the sound.

One of her hands dug into Hardison’s fur with such fervor it should have hurt him, but he just put all of his weight into leaning against her lithe form, still vibrating with hurt he had unwittingly caused.

“I’m sorry.” His throat was raspy, like he had gone days without speaking. Maybe he had. 

“Don’t apologize.” Parker’s voice was steady, “Just stop hiding from us and be honest.”

Eliot hadn’t been hiding from them specifically, not really. He was hiding from everyone, but he didn’t correct her, because he _was_ hiding from what they represented, or what they could give--and take. “Are you sure?” His voice was small, so small, and too scared by far.

Parker nodded, steadfast, Hardison whined and Eliot’s head tilted down and over, barring his neck for an--no _his_ \--Alpha, his. His. Pack. Family.

They came closer and his eyes shut because he was afraid but he wanted this, he wanted to trust and he wanted to give in, wanted everything to fall away again like he hadn’t in years. A strong hand wound through his hair at the base of his skull and pulled, drawing out a _keen_ from Eliot that Hardison echoed.

The big black Wolf leaned heavily onto his legs and Eliot’s fingers sought out his fur like Parker had, “Ours.” She breathed into his neck, “Yours.”

Eliot breathed in deep, feeling the scents of _them_ soak into his lungs, and he cried.

(done!)


End file.
